Well, you’ll just have to imagine my best Schwarzenegger impression.

First post-Holiday show.

No Means No

Miss Congeniality?

Not me. Kick ’em in the ‘Nads and then, when they’re on the ground writhing in pain?

Kick ’em in the ‘Nads again.

The Masked Singer has to be the stupidest idea for a game show ever.

Lots of chatter today among the classes that do, namely the Versailles Villagers, about how, for the good of the country mind you, Democrats ought to cave to Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio on his Vanity Project Penis Wall ‘O Racism because he’s never going to compromise.

Oh but he’s already compromised they wail (he is compromised, by Russian Intelligence), he’s going to let the DACA kids and the TPS asylum seekers stay.

Well, that’s a piece of crap.

He’s offering a temporary reprieve of 3 years (from a policy he created from a tissue of lies and which was deliberately crafted to be as cruel and callous as possible). Let’s break that down. Currently he is legally prevented from deporting them by court ruling and that will not change until the first Monday in October since the Supreme Court has declined to hear arguments about it this term. That’s year one, done deal and so- nothing. No compromise, no concession.

The next year, 2020, is an election year and it would dim to the point of extinction any prospect of any Republican electoral gains and may indeed doom them as a Political Party to massive losses. That’s year two, done deal and so- nothing. No compromise, no concession.

Year three? If Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio is not tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail to face prosecution for his multitudinous crimes, well, you’ll be happy that the Internet is international because I’m not sticking around for the MAGA Pogroms.

Not a lick of compromise or concession in it. Democrats would be stupid to accept even if it were only as bad as that.

But wait! There’s more!

In the abomination McConnell is bringing to the floor of the Senate tomorrow are more restrictions on legal immigration calculated exclusively to prevent Brown and Black people from living in the United States and a number of measures designed to deport those already legally here.

It is a particularly dumb lie. Hispanics are just as “White” as the French, Germans, Danes, English or any other European people.

You may take solace in the fact that only 40% of your friends, neighbors, and relatives are stone cold Racists, but they do make up 80% of the Republican Party (the other 20% are merely hypocritical greed heads).

The point is that the Vanity Project Penis Wall ‘O Racism is enormously unpopular, at least among people who aren’t Racists. digby explains-

When Senator Lindsey Graham R-SC said the other day that the wall had become a metaphor for border security he was half right. It’s become a metaphor for the political divide.

Polling from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) reveals that the wall represents something very different to those who support it and those who don’t, and what it means goes right to the heart of how these different Americans see themselves, their future and their country.

According to the polling, among all Americans, 58 percent oppose building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, compared to 41 percent who favor the policy. White Americans without a four-year college degree favor this policy 55 percent vs. 35 percent. And 55 percent of white men favor the wall, compared to 42 percent of white women. (These numbers closely align with other polls from CNN, the Pew Research Center, Quinnipiac and ABC/Washington Post) That breaks down to 80 percent of Republicans in favor of building a wall along the border, 80 percent of Democrats oppose and 62 percent of Independents oppose.

But the wall is a symbol for something much more fundamental. CNN’s Ron Brownstein wrote a comprehensive analysis of these findings which back up his central thesis of a nation divided between what he calls the Republican “coalition of restoration” vs the Democratic “coalition of transformation.”
…
You won’t be surprised to learn that the PRRI poll shows that wall supporters are just as hostile to legal immigration as they are to undocumented immigrants who cross the border illegally. Or that they are upset when they are exposed to people who don’t speak English and believe they are threatening our traditional values. So all this folderol about “border security” isn’t really about crime. It’s just about keeping foreigners out of the country.

These folks have similar attitudes about race and gender too. Wall supporters see no problems with systemic racism or police violence, and in fact believe that whites are more discriminated against than African-Americans. They don’t believe feminism reflects what most women believe, and a majority of them think men are just as discriminated against as women.

Wall opponents believe the opposite on all those issues. Indeed, it appears that one can fairly well determine what a person’s values and beliefs about what America stands for simply by asking their position on the wall.

Starting to feel the heat over the government shutdown from Republicans, President Trump gave a desultory speech over the weekend in which he pretended to offer a compromise on the government shutdown. This would allow DACA recipients as well as immigrants with Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, a three-year reprieve in exchange for a bunch of money to put even more equipment, people and other resources on the border — as well as, of course, the $5.7 billion Trump is demanding for his wall. Considering that he’s the one who withdrew the protections for the DACA and TPS immigrants in the first place, it took some nerve for him to “offer” to allow them to stay in the country temporarily. No one has ever accused Donald Trump of not having chutzpah.

When the White House finally released its full plan on Monday, of course, it turned out to be yet another bait and switch.

As Spencer Ackerman and Scott Bixby of the Daily Beast explain it, this proposal would balloon the ICE budget, with at least $1 billion more than previously allotted, along with an additional 2,000 agents. But that’s not the worst of it. The proposal severely limits legal immigration while increasing detention and deportation. Worst of all, it eviscerates the asylum protections for refugees, taking particular aim at Central American children, pretty much making it impossible for them to seek safety in the United States.
…
Remember, the young people in question are fleeing their home countries because they are in mortal danger. As Jonathan Ryan, executive director of the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) told the Daily Beast, “The first and most critical step in not dying in a house that’s on fire is to get out of the house.”

The proposal is contradictory and logically absurd, filled with Catch-22s that would leave a bunch of kids stranded at the border for months. It also eliminates judicial review, leaving all decisions in the hands of the Director of Homeland Security, whose job under the Trump administration seems to be completely focused on punishing children who cross the Mexican border.

The Democrats have rejected this proposal for obvious reasons. The “deal” to reopen the government is getting more unacceptable to them by the day. It didn’t take a genius to see that if they believe the wall is an immorality, doubling down on the cruelty toward Central American children seeking protection and refuge in was not an effective way sweeten the deal.

As we can see in those PRRI poll results, this isn’t really about a wall for anybody. Since the supporters only represent 40 percent of the population, if they want to prevail they have to force their worldview on the majority against its will. Holding the government hostage to the point of pain for millions of Americans — in order to inflict pain on vulnerable refugees and immigrants — is an exercise of power to prove just whose country this is. That too is an immorality.

Greg Sargent points out-

Trump’s position is weakening fast. Here’s how Democrats can exploit that.
By Greg Sargent, Washington Post
January 23, 2019

The New York Times has now confirmed that the White House deliberately ensured that poison pills were inserted into the Senate GOP bill to reopen the government. As the Times reports, White House officials “conceded privately” that they “tacked on controversial proposals anathema to Democrats that would block many migrants from seeking asylum.”

This week, the Senate will vote on that bill, which reflects the Trump proposal to reopen the government. Trump pretends it’s a compromise. In reality, it is larded up with cruel provisions hatched from Stephen Miller’s nationalist fever dreams. It would further restrict asylum seeking in multiple ways. It offers one-time legislative relief to 700,000 young immigrants brought here illegally as children — a.k.a. “dreamers” — but only in a manner that codifies relief that has already been granted and that Trump is trying to take away, and appears to create new obstacles for them to apply.

At the same time, however, Axios reports that some in Trump’s orbit, including son-in-law Jared Kushner, want him to offer a path to getting green cards to those 700,000 dreamers. But some on the right are arguing against this. Why? As one GOP senator puts it: “If you throw green cards onto the table, this whole coalition will fall over on the right.” Trump, this senator says, cannot afford to “lose” the likes of Sean Hannity.

In other words, some around Trump recognize that making genuine concessions to Democrats actually would provide a way out of this standoff. But doing this risks splitting off pro-Trump forces on the right.

All this comes as a new CBS News poll finds that 71 percent of Americans overall, including 71 percent of independents and even 43 percent of Republicans, say the wall is not worth shutting down the government over. Only 28 percent say it’s worth the shutdown. Trump’s approval is mired at 36 percent. Large majorities — again, including independents — say the border can be secured without the wall.

Trump’s public position is weakening. The restrictionist right wing he’s appeasing — the one that Trump and Miller played to by salting the “compromise” with poison pills, the one that would revolt if Trump made actual concessions to Democrats — is increasingly isolated.

This week, the Senate will vote on the Trump sham compromise and on a Democratic proposal to reopen the government without wall funding. Both will almost certainly fail. But some in Congress believe that once this happens, it will increase pressure for a renewed compromise push.

House Democrats can proactively take control of that coming debate. They can initiate oversight hearings on what really went into Trump’s family-separations policies. Remember, those were Trump’s response to the crisis created by the crush of asylum-seeking migrants (they were meant as deterrence, and failed). This would highlight the naked cruelty, ineffectiveness and deeply misguided worldview driving his immigration agenda.

Hearings could focus more broadly on the true causes and solutions to the current migrant crisis at the border, and on what to do to prevent more migrant children from dying. Trump keeps lurching between spewing endless lies to paint asylum-seeking migrants as menacing invaders, and pretending to care about their humanitarian plight. We cannot have a debate in an environment that is so asymmetrically saturated by Trumpian disinformation, bad faith and hate.

Democrats can use hearings to restore much-needed facts to the discussion, ones focused on the need to invest more money in unclogging court backlogs and in beefing up border infrastructure and treatment options for what really is a new kind of immigration, and on the need for regional solutions to the root causes of migration surges.

“I think we have to do that, and I think we will,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) told me, speaking about such hearings. Connolly noted that multiple committees could launch a broad look at everything from what analyses went into Trump’s demand for 234 miles of wall, to 21st-century ways of fortifying security at ports of entry, to what is actually needed to relieve the humanitarian plight of migrants.

“Let’s get some factual data about what’s happening at the southern border,” Connolly said, whether in the “postmortem of the shutdown, or during the shutdown” if necessary.

Following that, House Democrats could hold votes on bills pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into updating the border to better handle the new humanitarian challenges (Trump’s own border officials want such spending). They could vote on permanent protections for the dreamers. They could package those things with the $1.3 billion for border security they have already offered Trump.

All this would place Democrats firmly in favor of reopening the government — which they have already passed bills doing — while also securing the border, addressing the plight of migrants in a truly humane way that is not grounded in fantasies and lies about them, and offering a real permanent solution for the dreamers.

“Work should begin in Congress now to develop plans to address the major border and immigration challenges which remain unaddressed,” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg emails. “It’s long past time for Democrats to wrest control of the debate from the president and his extremist allies.”

This would maneuver Trump into the position of turning down all these solutions — that is, holding them hostage — for his wall, which only a shrinking minority wants, and which we do not need. Alternatively, it points a way toward a deal — one that would address some of these terrible humanitarian problems in exchange for more border security money, possibly including more barriers — that both sides could conceivably accept. Provided that there’s some point at which Trump is willing to “lose” Hannity.

I think Greg Sargent is too charitable.

I call it the Vanity Project Penis Wall O’ Racism because it is. It is ineffective, you can saw through it, tunnel under it, climb over it, pass drugs between the spikes, and walk around it- 250 miles is a mere 15% of 1600 miles of border currently unsecured by physical barriers. It is a Vanity Project that will actually cost upwards of $50 Billion and $10s of Billions each year to maintain.

Penis? Well, it looks like miles and miles of Penises, an anatomical feature of Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio that we are reliably informed by Stephanie Clifford is misshapen and not particularly “Yuuuge” at all. Rather the opposite actually.

Wall O’ Racism? Check out that piece by digby again.

The correct course of action for Democrats is to be unresponsive to the tantrums of Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio. He must make true concessions and compromises and be seen to make true concessions and compromises.

We’re not an entirely Racist country, just 40% of us are.

Couldn’t get out this year but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did.

Sigh. Six more years until she can run for President.

It is simply not helpful in any way for Democrats to accept the temporary extension of DACA and TPS (3 years with a 1 year delay already dictated by the Supreme Court because they refused to hear arguments this term and add another since next year is an election year) in exchange for Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s Vanity Project Penis Wall O’ Hate (did you think I’d forgotten?).

It is useless in terms of border security, $5.7 Billion only covers 250 (at best) miles of 1600 miles of border that is otherwise unsecured except for the normal things you’d do and we are doing as a matter of course, and the Democrats have already offered $1.3 Billion for Drones, Maintenance, Fencing, Court Staffing, Additional Agents, and Humanitarian Assistance.

Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s problem is that it’s not the Vanity Project Penis Wall O’ Hate he can brag to his Bigoted Racist Base about and he doesn’t have Nancy Pelosi’s head on a stick.

It’s not just stupid, he is losing. “Lorsque l’ennemi fait un faux mouvement nous devons prendre bien soin de ne pas l’interrompre,” Support among even the die hards is falling at .5% or more every week in every poll.

No wonder Nancy is grinning.

Live from New York it’s Saturday Night!

Give Him The Urn

The Big One

I’ll point out I’m not a Boomer, I’m a survivor of The Great War. Not that I fought mind you and Hemingway was already an asshole.

Millenials

No High Heels! (The 60s)

Oh Yeah! At Jonestown it was Flavor Aid because what? You’re going to pay extra for that non-carbonated, sweetened, powdered concentrate drink mix you’re going to mix cyanide with?

The New York Times Best Seller List is not all it’s cracked up to be (not the kind of thing I write)

Oh, you want news.

Hey, Pete Davidson saw The Mule and didn’t kill himself over his breakup with Ariana Grande (she licks doughnuts and puts them back, ick). Yay I guess, it’s a good thing not to commit suicide (young people are so dramatic, they think because their personal experience is limited that any amount of time is long- tell me after 120+ years) despite being subjected to one of Clint’s recent pieces of crap.